Place:Holland, England

NOTE: All divisions of Holland are listed in WeRelate as "Contained Places" in Lincolnshire.

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

The "Parts of Holland", commonly "Holland, Lincolnshire" is an administrative county used in southeast Lincolnshire, England from 1889 to 1974.

Administration

Parts of Holland was one of the three medieval subdivisions or 'Parts' of Lincolnshire (the other two were Lindsey and Kesteven) which had long had the privilege of separate legal administrations (Quarter Sessions). Under the Local Government Act 1888 it obtained a county council, which it retained until 1974. At that point the three county councils were abolished and Lincolnshire (minus the northern part of Lindsey) had a single county council for the first time.

Before the changes of 1888, Holland had, since probably the tenth century, been divided into the three wapentakes of Elloe, Kirton and Skirbeck.

Under the Local Government Act 1894 it was divided into rural districts, urban districts, and the Municipal Borough of Boston.
The rural districts were

• Boston,
• Crowland,
• East Elloe and
• Spalding,

whilst the urban districts were

• Holbeach,
• Long Sutton,
• Spalding and
• Sutton Bridge.

In 1932, the Crowland Rural District (which consisted of the single parish of Crowland) was abolished and added to Spalding Rural District, and all the urban districts apart from Spalding were abolished and added to East Elloe Rural District.

Geography

The extent of Holland County Council (the pre-1974 county) was the same as that of the combined modern local government districts of Boston and South Holland.

The ground of Holland is close to sea level, achieving a maximum altitude of about five metres (16 feet) on artificially raised river banks (levees). It therefore needed carefully managed drainage to maintain the very productive arable farmland which covered almost its entire extent. Consequently, a significant part of its drainage for arable use was obliged to await the introduction of steam pumping. Before the mid-nineteenth century, Holland was a much more pastoral area, used for fattening stock brought in from Scotland and northern England before it was driven to market in places like London. Many of the country roads are still called droves.

There is a resemblance in landscape between the Parts of Holland and Holland, the region in the Netherlands, although their meanings are different. Holland in England means "land of the hill spurs", although hill spurs are hardly obvious. Both Hollands have landscapes that are low lying and both are known for tulip growing.

Research Tips

Lincolnshire is very low-lying and land had to be drained for agriculture to be successful. The larger drainage channels, many of which are parallel to each other, became boundaries between parishes. Many parishes are long and thin for this reason.

There is much fenland in Lincolnshire, particularly in the Boston and Horncastle areas. Fenlands tended to be extraparochial before the mid 1850s, and although many sections were identified with names and given the title "civil parish", little information has been found about them. Many appear to be abolished in 1906, but the parish which adopts them is not given in A Vision of Britain through Time. Note the WR category Lincolnshire Fenland Settlements which is an attempt to organize them into one list.

From 1889 until 1974 Lincolnshire was divided into three administrative counties: Parts of Holland, Parts of Kesteven and Parts of Lindsey. These formal names do not fit with modern grammatical usage, but that is what they were, nonetheless. In 1974 the northern section of Lindsey, along with the East Riding of Yorkshire, became the short-lived county of Humberside. In 1996 Humberside was abolished and the area previously in Lincolnshire was made into the two "unitary authorities" of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The remainder of Lincolnshire was divided into "non-metropolitan districts" or "district municipalities" in 1974. Towns, villages and parishes are all listed under Lincolnshire, but the present-day districts are also given so that places in this large county can more easily be located and linked to their wider neighbourhoods. See the WR placepage Lincolnshire, England and the smaller divisions for further explanation.

• Maps provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time show all the parishes and many villages and hamlets. (Small local reorganization of parishes took place in the 1930s led to differences between the latter two maps.):

• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1888 with Poor Law Union divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map of 1900 with early Rural District divisions
• Lincolnshire Ordnance Survey Map, revised 1937 with later Rural District divisions

• FindMyPast now has a large collection of Lincolnshire baptisms, banns, marriages and burials now available to search by name, year, place and parent's names. This is a pay website. (blog dated 16 Sep 2016)
• GENUKI's page on Lincolnshire's Archive Service gives addresses, phone numbers, webpages for all archive offices, museums and libraries in Lincolnshire which may store old records and also presents a list entitled "Hints for the new researcher" which may include details of which you are not aware. These suggestions are becoming more and more outdated, but there's no telling what may be expected in a small library.
• GENUKI also has pages of information on individual parishes, particularly ecclesiastical parishes. The author may just come up with morsels not supplied in other internet-available sources.
• Deceased Online now has records for 11 cemeteries and two crematoria in Lincolnshire. This includes Grimsby's Scartho Road cemetery, Scartho Road crematorium, and Cleethorpes cemetery, council records for the City of Lincoln and Gainsborough, and older church records from The National Archives for St Michael's in Stamford, and St Mark's in Lincoln, dating back to 1707. This is a pay website.